Join us on Thursday, April 30th, from 14-16 hrs (German time) for the first RUSTLab lecture of this summer term. Leman Çelik, Stefan Laser, Estrid Sørensen and Sandra Abels will launch their book on “Staying with the Planet: The University that Tried to Reckon with Ecological Reality, Challenged Excessive Data Infrastructures, and Nurtured a Few Alternatives Not Planned For”.
Hidden from view, university data infrastructures circulate, process and store scientific data while requiring extensive energy and metal extraction. The authors of this volume offer a speculative engagement with cultures of scientific competition, institutional habits, server procurement and regulations, and with funding procedures that each in different ways contribute to scientific computing and its planetary effects. Short speculative ethnographic texts and original line art offer witty and thought-provoking takes on the challenges data-driven science faces in times of climate change.
The book was published by transcript in February 2026 and can be found here (Open Access).
Leman Çelik is a doctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained in sociology and political science in Instanbul, she conducted research in urban studies before expanding her focus to science and technology studies. Her work investigates data infrastructures and the knowledge production practices of diverse scientific fields, with a particular interest in the reciprocal relationship between data infrastructures and scientific knowledge.
Stefan Laser is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He has published widely on high-tech infrastructures, socio-ecological transitions, waste, and energy, and contributes to economic sociology, science and technology studies, valuation studies and discard studies. His search focuses on data centres and their planetary entanglement, from local siting to global value chains, in particular researching Asia-Pacific with a focus on the emerging chip industry in Vietnam.
Estrid Sørensen is a professor of cultural psychology and anthropology of knowledge at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She conducts research on the intersection of technology and knowledge
production from a Science & Technology Studies perspective, and is the head of the RUSTlab, the Ruhr-University Science & Technology Studies Lab. Her ethnographic research addresses data infrastructures, particularly data centres. She inquires into university data centres as mediators between knowledge and the planet, and searches how they contribute to making knowledge (in)visible as planetary.
Sandra Abels studies social sciences at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and is a research student at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds. She is interested in science and technology studies, ethnographic research, and research at the boundaries between science and art. For her master’s thesis, she is researching the restructuring of a museum’s digital data base and the respective data infrastructure.
Location: on campus (MB 4/165) and Zoom
Zoom Link
PW: RUSTlab
You will find additional resources and information on this term’s guiding theme Scattered Grounds here on our website.